Houston’s METdance loses its home, leaps into a shaky...

1of16METdance performers, including SinClair Davis and Dwain Travis, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

2of16METdance artistic director Marlana Doyle watches rehearsal on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

3of16Water sits in one of the studios at METdance performers rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

4of16METdance performers, including SinClair Davis, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

5of16The current entrance for METdance and Weights + Measures on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

6of16METdance performers, including SinClair Davis, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

7of16METdance performers, including Vincent Calleros, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

8of16METdance performers, including Marissa Sheffer and Vincent Calleros, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

9of16METdance artistic director Marlana Doyle watches rehearsal on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

10of16METdance professional dancers Dwain Travis and Lisa D'Souza rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

11of16Studio B at METdance has been plagued with mold and a leaking ceiling. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

12of16Water sits in one of the studios at METdance performers rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

13of16METdance performers, including Elizabeth Sutton, rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

14of16METdance professional dancers Elizabeth Sutton and DaMond Graner rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

15of16METdance professional dancers Dwain Travis and Lisa D'Souza rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

16of16METdance professional dancers Dwain Travis and Paige White rehearse on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 in Houston. The company, which is the second-largest professional dance company and school in Houston, is being evicted from their current studio.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The ominous, percussion-driven music that filled a large room at METdance’s Midtown studios Tuesday sounded like it could have been made for a movie about space aliens. The company’s nine dancers seemed to be battling an unseen force as they pushed and pulled their way through tight, continuously changing groups.

They were rehearsing their latest commissioned piece by nationally-known choreographer Kate Skarpetowska, which premieres Friday at Miller Outdoor Theatre. But they might as well have been telling their own story.

As of Friday, METdance is homeless, unable to keep its head above water with oppressive rent in Midtown and cash flow problems that have lingered since Hurricane Harvey. “It’s the first time in 40 years I haven’t had a dance studio to go to,” said executive director Michelle Smith, who founded METdance 24 years ago by rebranding the Delia Stewart Dance Company and Center, which she previously led.

The MET gambled — and has lost — on a huge investment. Six years ago, it spent $500,000 to build out the METdance center in an 11,000-square foot space at 2808 Caroline where it also had a 10-year lease that cost $15,000 a month in rent and expenses. The company performs elsewhere, so its concerts are not impacted.

But it stands to lose a more significant chunk of earned income, because addition to its professional dance company and two youth companies, it operates Houston’s second largest dance school, after Houston Ballet’s. It also rented out its four studios to other companies, and that loss is causing a ripple effect through the local dance community.

“It’s a huge loss,” said choreographer Jane Weiner. “They were the hub, and the most generous studio renters in town. They wanted everybody to succeed.”

Weiner closed her own Hope Stone Studio five years ago. “We didn’t know how to move forward and stay fiscally responsible,” she said, “and without the studio, we weren’t sure who we were. I was lucky because I got to close the door and disappear for a while.” She eventually revived Hope Stone as a more nomadic, project-based organization, and she taught classes at the MET in trade for using the studios for her rehearsals. She rented space there most recently from early January through March.

“It was a great location, and the spirit was great,” Weiner said. “It’s sad that we’ve become a market city over a people city, without the realization that having them in Midtown was the best thing for our city.” Houston Ballet was a recipient of the MET’s largesse, too: When its building was flooded by Harvey, the MET opened its studios to them for a reduced rate.

Attendance at the MET school dropped pecipitously after the storm and still has not recovered fully, Smith said. Persistent water damage in one studio also cost potential revenue. Now, the MET is more than $38,000 in arrears to landlord Jon Deal, whose company bought the building last July.

Ironically, Deal is widely considered one of the most arts-friendly landlords in town. Along with several partners, he built out the sprawling art studio compounds at Sawyer Yards, Spring Street and Winter Street just west of downtown. After leaders of Houston’s arts community pleaded with him to help solve the MET’s situation , he offered the company free rent for the summer if it first paid its back rent.

Smith said the offer came too late, after an order to vacate was issued. Her board decided it had bled enough money into the space, and not just because of the high rent. The MET, which may have been insufficiently insured, lost a $100,000 walnut dance floor to water damage and was not reimbursed for an air conditioner it lost during a fire at Weights and Measures, the restaurant that fills much of the building’s ground floor.

There was nothing in the MET’s lease to negotiate, because the company was already paying significantly less than market rent — about $1.50 per square foot total, including expenses for common areas such as the parking lot and entry, Deal said. “If I thought there was light at the end of this tunnel, I’d help out. But they bit off more than they could chew.”

Commercial rents in Midtown have risen dramatically in the past five or six years, now averaging nearly $25 a square foot, according to the real estate services firm NAI Partners.

Chuck Still, the executive director of the MATCH, the three-year old Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston at 3400 Main built to support small arts groups, peers longingly at adjacent lots MATCH leaders could have bought a few years ago. “When this property was built, nobody knew if the MATCH would work,” he said.

Now the MATCH, which has four theaters, a rehearsal room and offices for small companies, is full to the brim. Still was only able to accommodate the MET serendipitously, because DiverseWorks canceled a summer show it had planned for the MATCH gallery six weeks out.

“I tell people ‘no’ all the time,” Still said. “I could fill two more spaces, easily.”

Rather than cancel their summer programs, Smith and artistic director Marlana Doyle have also rented studios at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and University of Houston. And they are shopping for a new, semi-permanent space that will likely be outside Loop 610, where rents are more affordable.

The school’s students come from across the Houston region, Doyle said, sounding more optimistic than Smith. “METdance is not a building. It’s people,” she said. “This building is not sustainable. It was an albatross from the beginning.”

Still, she said, the professional dance company, which spends about $100,000 a year to create works and pay its nine contracted dancers, can’t operate without a home.

Smith doesn’t yet know how she and the MET board will solve a cash crunch that is likely to linger at least until July, when they collect tuition for summer intensive sessions attended by students from across the U.S. The company has posted a plea for funds on its website.

The MET organization receives about 30 percent of its funds from public and private sources — primarily the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Houston Arts Alliance and the Houston Endowment. That’s at least 10 percent less than five years ago, making the company more dependent than ever on earned income from its classes and programs.

Doyle notes that recent collaborations with classical music groups, including the Houston Symphony, have enabled METdance to expand its footprint in recent seasons. While they all need financial help from somewhere, she’s of the mind that companies can also help each other out, sharing resources and donors.

“There are a lot of supporters for the arts,” Doyle said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right ones.”

Molly Glentzer, a staff arts critic since 1998, writes mostly about dance and visual arts but can go anywhere a good story leads. Through covering public art in parks, she developed a beat focused on Houston's emergence as one of the nation's leading "green renaissance" cities.

During about 30 years as a journalist Molly has also written for periodicals, including Texas Monthly, Saveur, Food & Wine, Dance Magazine and Dance International. She collaborated with her husband, photographer Don Glentzer, to create "Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents: Portraits and Legends of 50 Roses" (2008, Clarkson Potter), a book about the human culture behind rose horticulture. This explains the occasional gardening story byline and her broken fingernails.

A Texas native, Molly grew up in Houston and has lived not too far away in the bucolic town of Brenham since 2012.